Parasol to play Dawn Theatre tonight

Saturday

Mar 23, 2013 at 1:43 PMMar 23, 2013 at 1:43 PM

By Matt Durr

matt.durr@hillsdale.netHILLSDALE — The life of a musician involves countless hours of travel across a seemingly endless stretch of road all for the chance to play in front of a live audience. It’s an adrenalin rush that cannot be captured in a typical professional.

For Hillsdale native Patrick Martin, tonight marks the end of his first cross-country tour as a musician, with Martin and his band Parasol performing at The Dawn Theatre.

Parasol’s performance tonight caps off a week-long tour that started in Los Angeles earlier this week and featured a recording session and gig in Denver. The band drove from Los Angeles to Hillsdale for tonight’s performance and afterward will travel back to Boston, the city the band calls home.

For Martin, the chance to hit the road with his bandmates for the first time is an exciting opportunity.

“This is the thing I’ve always wanted to do since I was super-little,” Martin said in a telephone interview while he was in Malibu, Calif. this week. “When you’re young, you always envision the person you wanted to be and I wasn’t able to do that in high school. It’s a pretty cool thing.”

Parasol formed in Boston, where the members all attend the Berklee College of Music. Recently the band began playing shows in Boston while trying to build a reputation in the area. Martin admitted it’s been tough to make money early on, but the experience of being on stage is worth every minute.

“Being at music school is definitely totally different. You have to keep up the curriculum, but on the weekends when other kids just want to party, you’re out there pursuing your actual career,” Martin said. “You get what you give. We’re just trying to put as much into it as possible and see what happens.”

With that in mind, the band jumped at the chance to play in front of crowds across the country while finding time to lay down some tracks in a studio.

“We’ve only done one show outside of Boston and that was here in Malibu and that was pretty sweet. The place got pretty packed. Everyone overall was pretty engaged in what we were doing,” he said.

Engaging the crowd is exactly what Martin, the lead singer, wants to do tonight when Parasol takes the stage at The Dawn Theatre. While he hasn’t told the band much about Hillsdale, he did say that Michigan is nothing like it was portrayed in the recent movie “Five Year Engagement.”

“Even though it’s the smallest town in this trip, it sounds like it’s going to be the biggest show,” Martin said. “I just want to pack the place. I hear it can hold 250 people and that’s what I want to see. I want this band to be the cause for that place to be packed again.”

Once the band returns to Boston to close out the semester, Martin and one of his bandmates will return to Malibu for summer internships. After the experience of the last week, Martin said the band definitely wants to be in the Los Angeles area going forward.

“I feel like out here you can kind of feel the opportunity,” he said.

Parasol and another band, Ghosts in the Attic (from Kalamazoo) are each scheduled to play tonight at The Dawn Theatre. There will be a $5 cover at the door and doors open at 7:30 p.m.